Wrench to the Face
by Crowmunculus
Summary: Because nothing says "I love you" like blunt force head trauma. Five EdWin ficlets, spoilers for everything. Written for Amythista in a gift exchange.
1. blazing like rebel diamonds

**A/N: Note that the title and summary are entirely silly and not serious in the slightest; I see Winry's wrenchings as a visual gag and I do not condone concussion via wrench as a means of flirting in real life any more than I endorse burning down your house and joining the military (I don't.) Haters gonna hate, but I ain't one of them.  
**

**This collection was written for the fantastic Amythista in a gift exchange. She is awesome and you should read her EdWin fics like right now.**

**

* * *

**

**i. blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun  
Rating: K+  
Genre: Um. Introspective or something? Stream of consciousness?  
Notes: Vaguely mangaverse, but no spoilers.  
**

.

He held an intensity in his eyes that burned him from the inside out. When he came to her, battered, broken, burning, she held him gently (_with hands meant to save people_) like he was a fading ember, so careful and caring but bitterly restrained, afraid of being burned herself.

And he'd always had that fire but not like this, never like this, only after his mother's death had all that passion and drive been tempered into something dangerous and unpredictable, self-destructive. She's afraid that someday it will consume him, that he'll just keep burning until he burns himself out, until there's nothing left of him.

But he's so strong. So much strength in such a small body. She saw it during his automail surgery, when she stripped him down to his base components, sinew and bone and _blood_, so much blood, she'll never have that blood (_his blood_) off her hands and she feels it four years later still caked beneath her fingernails and in the grooves of the callused skin of her palms; when she cut into his flesh with surgical steel (_and he never screamed_) she felt the strength flowing from him as hot and tangible as the dark red blood flowing onto the sheets like the tears he wouldn't let himself cry.

Never screamed, only burned. He was eleven.

...they are much too young to be dying this way.


	2. seasons will still go round and round

**ii. but the seasons will still go round and round  
(****季節はそれでも巡り巡ってく****)  
Rating: K  
Genre: Angst oh god the angst but with some hidden sap  
Notes: First anime end spoilers, pre-CoS.  
**

**

* * *

**.**  
**

She's not all that surprised when Al returns home, alone. She listens, numbly, detached, as the woman named Rose explains in hushed tones what had happened in the hidden city below Central: monsters and resurrection and sacrifice. Such darkness is so alien, so distant from the green windswept hills of Resembool that she can imagine it a story from a book, a scene from a movie watched years ago and forgotten about until now. Something from a fairy-tale, and not something that has happened to her.

She listens. She nods. And when the story's done, she walks slowly to the other room where Al-not-Al is and holds him.

Al-not-Al, ten years old in body and mind and _oh, Ed._

He's just like she remembers, wide-eyed and innocent and perfect and it's almost enough to pretend that the last four years never happened, that it was all a bad dream and it's over now, Ed will be in the next room wide-eyed and innocent and perfect with two arms and legs –

But she's not the one transplanted in time; those days are over, gone, lost to her forever. The boy in front of her looks plucked from a photo album, stolen away from his childhood all too soon, and he asks for his brother for what must be the tenth time since returning to Resembool and that's what finally breaks her. She cries. She tells him, for what must be the tenth time since his return to Resembool, that his brother is gone and not coming back.

And for the tenth time he asks, "Where did he go?" and for the tenth time, she can't answer.

_Because she doesn't know either._

She can't tell him. Rose couldn't, and she can't, so all she says is "Your brother loved you very much."

Ed loved him, and now he's gone. She doesn't want to say the word "dead," doesn't even want to _think_ it – it sounds so final. And a part of her still expects that stupid boy-now-a-man to come limping up the road with a sheepish smile and a busted arm, and _Hey, Winry, I uh, kind of...broke it._ Any moment now. Any moment, she'll see the summer sunlight glinting gold on his hair in the distance, just above the curve of the next hill over, Ed returning to her like the sun rising in the morning.

Al scowls, his face all too childish. "He's not _gone_," he says; he can't say the word either. "He wouldn't leave me."

_(But Ed left her.)_

"He's _missing_, not gone," Al insists. "They never found his body, did they? I don't know what you're keeping from me, but he is _not gone._" He pulls away, leaves the room, and again, Winry is alone.

Later that week Mrs. Curtis and her husband visit for dinner. It's a tense, silent affair. And then Al-not-Al catches her gaze with a steel glare across the table and says he'll find his brother again, defiant and proud and so much like Ed. The shadow of his brother is in his resolute eyes and she knows, one way or another, she will lose him too.

Stupid brothers. _Stupid_ brothers, think they could pull the moon from the sky if they worked at it hard enough.

When Al leaves her he leaves in a blaze of October red, his brother's coat draped over his skinny too-young shoulders. It billows in the wind like something alive. He walks the steps his brother walked and someday he will be grown enough to fill them.

She feels like she's gone back in time to four years ago, this time to one brother setting off alone, perhaps to never return. But maybe he'll get it right this time. Maybe Al will find him.

She tells no one, but she keeps a new arm and leg prepared for someone who might never use them. She lays the mechanical parts out in front of her and reassembles them, pieces her life back together after everything fell apart. She rebuilds Ed in bolts and screws and dreams.

And dreams of someday, two brothers returning home to her in a blaze of autumn gold.


	3. wear my soul and call me a liar

**iii. wear my soul and call me a liar  
Rating: T for Ed's speaking role  
Genre: Fluff-angst hybrid? IDK  
Notes: Manga series end spoilers. I wrote this in a rush and it still needs a LOT of editing before I'm happy with it; concrit is loved like you wouldn't believe XD**

**

* * *

**

.

"You _idiot_."

Ed grumbled something incomprehensible and probably not very nice.

"_Idiot,"_ Winry repeated with a lovetap of her wrench to his temple for emphasis. "What kind of _idiot_ forgets his own arm? After all the trouble you two went through to get it back!"

His kind of idiot, apparently, and her kind of idiot by association. Ed grumbled some more and looked away, then mumbled something that might have been "I'm sorry" by some stretch of the imagination, though it sounded closer to "mmrrmry."

"You'd _better_ be sorry," she spat. "You big, stupid... _IDIOT_." Her nostrils flared and her fingers clenched and she shook in her seat with inarticulate fury and oh yes, he was certainly in for it this time.

"I said 'msorry!" he shouted back with a full body pout, neck hunched down to his shoulders, face one big frown. "It's not like I MEANT for this to happen!"

"If your body ends up facedown in the river tomorrow I'm sure I didn't MEAN for that to happen either!" And oh damn, her lower lip wobbled and she sniffled a little and the storm in her overcast eyes threatened to spill over; he'd made her cry again.

"No, no, don't cry!" he babbled in a panic, all defensiveness forgotten in the face of OH SHIT CRYING GIRL. "I'm really really sorry, it won't happen again - "

"It BETTER not happen again, you only have so many arms!"

" – please don't cry - "

"I'M NOT CRYING. THIS IS RAIN."

"We're inside!"

And bam, that did it: the pent-up tears broke free and streamed down her cheeks, dropped onto the hospital cot to leave dark wet spots on the sterile sheets. She cried openly, not bothering to hide it, because she knew exactly how to hurt him.

She dug the knife deeper: "You could have been killed," she spoke through tears. "You almost were."

Each tear was an accusation and her pain hurt him worse even than losing his arm again (and he wasn't just being a "macho dumbass" as his lovely fiancé so kindly put it; the adrenaline had kept the pain down until after the fight, when he promptly passed out.) Something compressed painfully in his chest, like some great weight crushing his ribs, squeezing tight. The elephant in the room sitting on top of him.

"But I wasn't," he said softly, all anger gone and replaced with a sick sense of shame, and he reached out with his remaining hand and clasped onto her trembling wrist. She turned her palm over and caught his hand, linked their fingers and stroked her thumb across the simple golden band she'd chosen for him.

She half-stifled a sob with minimal success, wiped her face with the back of her free hand. "You're an idiot," she said again, "I almost lost you."

He winced. It had been close, very close – the West City Fox River Killer had taken a leaf out of Scar's book and adopted alchemic deconstruction as his preferred method of attack, and when Ed instinctively blocked what would have been a fatal attack with his right arm...well. If the WCPD backup hadn't shown up when it did, Ed would be missing a lot more than just one arm.

"I'm sick of you being shipped back to me in pieces," she said, voice shaky but resolute. She squeezed his hand. "_Come home_, Ed. Al already has. Isn't two years long enough?"

He squeezed her palm gently in return. He couldn't answer. Instead he tugged her down to his level on the bed and kissed her.

"Jerk," she muttered, a few stray tears escaping despite her best efforts, and kissed back.

He hated to admit it and he never would (but Winry knew anyway) but he was entirely too much like his father – had that same wanderlust in his restless blood urging him onward along the road. Hell, he thought he'd die before he hit eighteen, and now that he knew the country wasn't going to be eaten by the wayward byproduct of a failed science fair experiment, he wanted to DO something with his life.

But he won't be that dad in the study. He won't be the ghost holding onto her heart. He won't. He won't.

_I will always return home to you,_ he promised silently, _as long as I'm alive._ And he wouldn't go and die on her, either. He had so much to live for.

They pulled apart. Ed separated their hands and stroked along the line of her jaw, smoothed away the last errant tears. "You'll have me home for a year, at least," he said wryly, jerking his head toward the mangled remains of his right shoulder.

"Two," she told him.

"Two?"

"Two years," she said firmly with no room for argument. "I don't want you puking up blood this time around. It's a pain to get it out of the sheets and it's definitely not sexy."

He thought of fighting her, thought better of it, and smiled.

"Deal. Two years."


	4. in a castle dark

**iv. in a castle dark  
Rating: K+  
Genre: Introspective quasi-angst, if that makes any sense  
Notes: Vaguely mangaverse, but no spoilers. Rushed again, concrit is love c:**

**

* * *

**.

There's a place he goes in his head sometimes where she can't follow. He has his scars and some of them are more than skin deep.

He has his scars and every time she sees him again he brings back more. Long, jagged lines torn across his chest, open puncture wounds, _bites_. Missing bits and pieces of himself left on his battlefields of city alleys and derelict buildings, and scattered in the gutters.

Winry longs to run her hands along Ed's scars, press her lips to his ruined skin. Stitch him back together with her touch alone.

But she can't.

So she gives him a leg to stand on and an arm to hold himself up, and he uses that leg to leave her and he uses that arm to push her away. He is so drowned by his own pain that he can't recognize the kindred pain in her.

He tells her, the next time he makes her cry, it'll be tears of happiness. She doesn't know if she entirely believes him. But still she holds onto the words like she holds onto him; like he can be saved.


	5. I don't shine if you don't shine

**v. I don't shine if you don't shine**  
**Rating: K**  
**Genre: HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY also sap**  
**Notes: Manga series end spoilers. Not even going to mention how late (and depressingly short) this is. Nope. Nevermind that I just did. Anyway, this is the last one! Still needs a lot of work but I'm sick of it sitting on my hard drive so I post regardless. As always, concrit makes me love you, in a completely writer-reader appropriate way.**

**For those of you who celebrate Easter, hope you had a good one! For those of you who don't celebrate, hope your ordinary April day was a good one! Thanks for reading :)**

* * *

.

And when they return home to her they return home on the heels of spring, returning with the light and new life and the green in the hills of Resembool. They return to her in birdsong, in sunshine and warmth and blue skies after rain. Everything slowly comes back to life, in a great circle, an unending flow, Ed tells her, of life from death, light from dark, hope from pain. Light always returns in the spring, no matter how long and hard the winter; he tells her, "I will always come home to you." (And that's what he's always done.) There are flowers growing from the wreckage of the Elric family home and Winry feels she understands.

For all that the years have changed, there are constants: spring always returns, and so does Ed. With each return he's a little older, a little wiser, a little more mature (but not by much.) Somewhere along the line they walk together he grew _tall_ (and she will never live it down;) his shoulders are broad and strong and on them he carries their future. She's not afraid, anymore, of the sight of his back vanishing into the unknown distance between Resembool and the horizon, because Edward Elric is as unstoppable as any force of nature, as certain as the sun rising in the morning. Somewhere between October and war, Edward Elric grew up.

She tells him, "I will always give you a home to come back to." (And that's what she's always done.)

April is miles, years away from the little boy bleeding to death on her living room floor, but that boy never died, never left her: he is here by her side exchanging vows they have known all along, finally happy, finally smiling, grown and strong and proud, and she holds that there is nothing that can't be fixed by enough patience, love, and proper upkeep.

And as long as the sun still rises in the morning they rise with it, together.

-end

* * *

.

**Lyric credits:**

**i. blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun – Read My Mind by The Killers**  
**ii. but the seasons will still go round and round (季節はそれでも巡り巡ってく) -LET IT OUT by Fukuhara Miho (福原美穂)**  
**iii. wear my soul and call me a liar – I Dare You by Shinedown**  
**iv. in a castle dark – If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot**  
**v. I don't shine if you don't shine – Read My Mind by The Killers**

**I own nothing but the CDs. No capital moneys were made from this fan endeavor :B**

**Also, from the first chapter: "much too young to be dying this way" is a line in the poem "August from My Desk" by Roland Flint. I'd forgotten I'd heard it before when I used it. Is this big enough that I should credit? Dunno, but crediting anyway. Not mine!  
**


End file.
